


I Would Have Been Your Knight

by sansakatara



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, game of thrones
Genre: Angst, Bran is the purest soul, Character Study, Comfort, Edited, Fuck Littlefinger, Fuck Ramsey, Grief, Justice for Jeyne Poole, Rickon Stark Lives, Underrated sibling relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22855516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sansakatara/pseuds/sansakatara
Summary: It is Bran who eases the emotions she'd been too afraid and shameful to give voice to.
Relationships: Bran Stark & Sansa Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 50





	I Would Have Been Your Knight

Sansa’s happiness at finally returning to Winterfell is undeniable. It is happiness made sweeter when she once thought it out of her reach forever. Gone like her family and herself bound to the Lannisters. She is home again and it is the same but different all at once from the place she’d left – what was it- five, six years ago?

  
But Winterfell itself does not match the deeper, exquisite joy of reuniting with her siblings. In Kingslanding, Joffrey gleefully told her how Theon Greyjoy had slain Bran and Rickon. _It seems your traitor brother has suffered his own betrayals, Lady Sansa._ It’d been nothing but a lie, Bran tells her now. They’d gotten away, thanks in no small part to Osha. Because of their escape, Theon killed the miller’s sons and passed their unrecognisable corpses off as the Stark princes. Sansa knows she should feel horror at such senseless butchery, and she does. When she thinks of those boys- she sees them in her mind’s eye as being like Bran and Rickon, and bile rises in her throat.

  
But she cannot deny her happiness at knowing it was not her baby brothers condemned to such a horrible fate. If she must feel this sense of shame and guilt for her brothers to be alive, so be it. And she knows she should hate Theon for what he did to Robb, but she can’t. Arya and Jon cannot understand Theon’s betrayals. To her siblings, Theon had been one of them. But Sansa knew differently now. Theon might have been raised alongside Ned Stark’s children, but he had never truly been one of them any less than she was not a hostage among Joffrey’s court. He lived under the threat of a blade from the time he was nine years old, and so had she aged eleven. Both important hostages - but that didn't take away the fear. Hers was still as integral as every breath she took and really with someone like Joffrey as king, was anyone safe? The Tyrells had made it clear as to what they thought of that question.

She also cannot hate Theon because of what he did for Jeyne. He had saved Jeyne, not because she was a Stark but because she was Jeyne. Her friend, who’d she spent hours with acting out the songs in the godswood or swimming in its’ hot springs, who she’d laughed and shared secrets with. She cannot hate Theon because it is of his actions that she is also reunited with Jeyne, even though there is a poignancy in her pretty brown eyes. It is this which makes her wish the Bolton Bastard had died a more gruesome, bloody death. That, and Littlefinger. She thinks of how Littlefinger had once told her many a man would drown in her eyes. She is glad that it was her eyes- full of nothing but icy contempt that Littlefinger "drowned in" as he died. And finally, she cannot find it in herself to hate Theon when she realizes that any punishment, she once wished upon him will always be eclipsed by the his own regrets and torments.

And Arya—Arya, who’d disappeared in Kingslanding when their father was arrested for his “treasons”. She remembers hearing Arya’s name being called off a list of those who were commanded to swear Joffrey fealty. Looking back now, Sansa thinks it was a bit stupid of the Lannisters to let it slip that early they didn’t have the younger Stark girl. She thought for a time, that Arya was at Winterfell with their brothers… but then the destruction of Winterfell and her brothers’ murders had travelled south. Nothing was said of a girl. But undoubtedly if Arya had been killed, Joffrey would sink his fangs into the news with delight. He had hated Arya after all. It was lack of information that left Sansa with no other answer that Arya was dead. But like the day Joffrey had made her look at the heads, she had tucked away the truth in her heart and made herself not see.

  
But Arya hadn’t been killed. She’d gotten away, but just barely. She’d been there in the crowd, the day of Father’s death. Afterwards, she’d been trying to get to Mother and Robb, sometimes alone and sometimes with others. She’d been there when _it_ happened, the beat of the drums pounding in her ears and the rain mingling with her tears. She’d left the Hound dying by the riverside, and went to Bravvos because she thought there’d been nothing left for her. Her little sister, who’d always been fierce and headstrong and sometimes combative, had been alive all this time. But she hadn’t escaped unscathed – her innocence had been stripped from her with every kill and every atrocity she’d witnessed. But like how she’d never been able to fully immerse as Alayne, her sister never truly lost herself either.

But her joy is stained by a hidden, more shameful part of her. It is like a crack in one of the Sept of Baelor’s beautiful windows; her joy is not void of uglier emotions. Emotions she’d dare not give voice to. It is the fact that while she will always grieve for Robb, she has come to feel resentment towards him as well. She had put such faith in him, and knowing now that Robb refused to trade her for the Kingslayer, it makes her ache inside. She understands that kings were meant to put the realm before their sisters, but she cannot forget the beatings she’d received in Kingslanding and thinks what good is such vows when they prevent you from protecting your family, and hadn’t she been Robb’s family first? She knows that her mother never gave up on her and Arya, indeed had committed treason by releasing Ser Jaime and instructing Brienne to take him to Kingslanding in hopes of getting her girls back. It is a sweet comfort, but it hadn’t been her mother she’d put her hope in. It had been Robb, and Robb- it felt as though he had given up on her. This is a hurt deepened by knowing how their half-brother responded when he had believed it was Arya married to Ramsey Bolton. He had his oaths too, but he put his family first. She cannot help but think with some irony that it is something out of the songs, although Arya hadn’t really cared much about them. Jon had acted as the knight for Arya that she had hoped Robb would be for her, and hadn't. But she does not speak of it, because to do so feels as though she would be betraying Robb’s memory and she doesn’t want to be accused of being a “stupid little girl.”

But despite her determination not to say anything, it is Bran who breaks through. They are sitting by the fire one evening, her and Bran and Rickon, just enjoying one another’s company while the flames flickered and danced like two lovers together in the hearth. Rickon is by her feet, and he asks them when will Jon and Arya come back from the Wintertown. There is a slight edge to his voice, and Sansa remembers how her brother experienced their Mother and Father and Robb leaving one day and never returning. She smooths his curls, gently telling him that Jon and Arya will not be long. “They’ll keep each other safe, don’t fret.” But while Rickon doesn’t pick up on the slight bitter inflection in her voice or the shadow that passes in her eyes, Bran does. He doesn’t say anything, not until Rickon has been lulled to sleep. Once their brother dreams, Bran speaks up.

  
“I would have come for you.”  
Sansa freezes. Bran continues.  
"I wanted to. When I was in Winterfell, before everything happened- I wanted to find you and Arya. “I told Luwin I’d rather be a wolf, because Summer could track where you were. Or if I wasn’t broken, Summer could fight alongside me like Grey Wind did with Robb. We’d break into the Red Keep and rip out the throats of every guard. And then I’d take you home.”  
Sansa’s lip quivers and there are tears in her eyes now. She meets Bran’s own, blue like hers, and full of understanding.  
“I would have been your knight if I could.”

Nothing more needs to be said.  
It is those words which make Sansa both shatter and feel whole, words gifted to her by a brother who had never given up on her. A brother who had loved the songs as much as she had, and would have made one of them come alive if he could by coming for her. And she knows that while Bran like Robb ultimately could not come- reasons including the fact that he had been a child like her- hearing him say these words and bringing her that sense of closure she’d needed is a solace beyond description.  
She does not say anything, but reaches out to take her brother’s hand in her own. She squeezes it gently, and she hopes that without saying anything Bran will understand at what he has given her. He does, and squeezes back.


End file.
